At 08:45 precisely on Wednesday 14th September, Joachim Schwalbach will take the stage to open up three days of spectacular debate, as he has done for the International CSR Conference Series since its inception in 2004. Joachim is Professor emeritus of International Management at Berlin's Humboldt University, and a prominent expert in CSR and related topics with a distinguished academic career to date.

I asked Joachim about his hopes for the upcoming conference.

Joachim Shwalbach: "Based on the take-out of the conference in 2014, my hope is that we find ways for technological innovations to empower individuals and organizations to contribute to society's well-being. The last conference concentrated on the connection between innovation and sustainability. There were many insights resulting from that conference, but I will mention only three: First, given the challenge to global sustainability, incremental improvements are not enough. Instead, sustainability driven innovations increase the likelihood to improve value creation by companies and in society. Second, the conference brought two camps, innovation and sustainability, together. These disciplines do not normally pay attention to each other in companies as well as in academia. Third, digitization may help to speed up the process so that innovation and sustainability will be present in all elements of the value chain in companies. The 2016 conference will be a natural extension of our thinking in 2014."

Well, there you are, and we are only at number two thing to do. If you are not convinced, read on for 8 more fun things to do.

3. Attend the first plenary at 0900 on Wednesday 14th September at the 7th International Conference on Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility at Humboldt University. Join Timotheus Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, Georg Kell, Vice Chairman of Arabesque Partners, an asset management firm for sustainable investing and the founding Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact until recently and David Kiron, executive editor of MIT Sloan Management Review's Big Ideas initiatives. They'll present their thoughts on CSR and Digitization. Surely that's fun enough to convince you to participate in this session. But if not, read on..

4.Come and have a drink with me at the Hotel de Rome. At the heart of everything that happens in Berlin, the Hotel de Rome is a great startpoint for your Berlin sightseeing. Unfortunately, I won't be doing much of that.. see points 5., 7., and 8.

5. Join me for a plenary panel that I will chair with a formidable group of experts at 14:00 on Wednesday 14th September on the subject of Digital Accountability. How is the digital world affecting communications with stakeholders? What is digitization doing to reporting and do we like it? Come and ask the tough questions!

7. Join me for another plenary panel that I will chair with another formidable group of experts at 09:00
on Thursday 15th September on the subject of Innovations in Sustainable Development with a focus on Human Rights. What are the practical steps being taken by companies to protect human rights? What outcomes can be identified? What innovations are we seeing? What are the minimum disclosure standards we should expect from corporations relating to human rights? How are we seeing the evolution of such disclosures today? What are the gaps? More on this .. but only if you show up. It's ok - you can bring ice cream.

8. Join me for yet another plenary panel that I will chair with yet another formidable group of experts at 14:00
on Thursday 15th September on the subject of Innovative Philanthropy and Impact Investing. What are the similarities and differences, and how can you tell? What contributes most to sustainable development? What's driving what? Don't worry, there won't be a call for financial contributions.

9. Join me for a massage at the Spa in the Hotel de Rome. After chairing all these plenary panels, even ice cream may not be enough to keep me cool and collected. The spa is located in what was once a vault for gold and jewellery. (The Hotel was built to house the headquarters of the Dresdner Bank in 1887). Maybe they didn't clean it out properly and we might find a few diamond tiaras and a ruby or two.

10. Go to one of the best Ice Cream Shops in Berlin and try out all the flavors you didn't already try. Joachim Schwalbach's favorite flavor is Cookies and Cream, so don't gorge yourself on that, so there is some left for him.

I could have continued with at least another 45 fun things to do in Berlin on 14-16 September (most of them associated with the CSR Conference). However, these are the Top Ten. If you allocate your time well, and screen your calls, you can probably manage to do all of them. Wow, that's a whole lot of fun in Berlin in three days. See you there?

I'll leave you with another thought from Joachim Schwalbach: "CSR or sustainability departments in companies have reached a cross-roads: Either they improve their competence as a valuable partner for the companies' top management to show that CSR aspects are key success factors, or they do business as usual and remain in their niche, not recognized as one of the most important drivers of business success." Yes, that's something else we'll be talking about in Berlin. Now you HAVE to come.